Aircraft display units present the pilot with information pertaining to the aircraft. Because the operation of an aircraft depends on an interaction between many disparate systems, the amount of information presentable to the pilot is vast and, as such, cannot be presented on one screen. To facilitate the presentation of the disparate systems, an image presented on the entire screen may be divided into windows. When a cursor is included, the pilot has the potential to select one interactive graphical user interface (GUI) or widget from a number GUIs or widgets within a window to communicate with the aircraft system(s). Also, the pilot may have the option to change the information being displayed in each window. Sometimes, the display of information is only needed momentarily.
Aviation professionals have developed ARINC Specification 661 entitled “Cockpit Display System Interfaces to User Systems” (ARINC 661), an aviation industry standard known to those skilled in the art. ARINC 661 specifies a two-way communication method in which there is a dynamic exchange of blocks of data between a user application (UA) employed by an aircraft system and a cockpit display system (CDS). The UA may send requests to the CDS, and the CDS may send notifications to the UA upon receiving a widget event in response to a cursor's interaction with a widget; that is, an interaction with a widget results with a notification being sent. While ARINC 661 specifies a widget-event notification process to change the display of information, this process may be manually cumbersome when the pilot requires a momentary display.